I am so glad you felt better. I bet that made you happy!

If you have a doctor that knows about supplements, you can ask about NAC and lung function. I take it daily for glutathione and so many reasons.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2706612/

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2010/...ysteine_01.htm

Thank you!

Well I took it again today and I really did get the effect I thought, my joints and lungs both felt good and I really can walk further without desaturating. I hope it continues to have more of an effect.

Mrs D, I don't know why I can feel it, I wouldn't believe it either. I usually can feel things like that. It may be part of my hypersensitivity issues, I had a bronchospasm at the grocery store the other day in the bread isle from the bread smell . I've been having some airway inflammation I can feel and turmeric takes that away like an aspirin takes care of a headache. Or maybe I got too many genes from my Norwegian ancestors who probably ate a lot of fish and I need more Omega 3s.

Flovent can cause all of this as a side effect and I'm trying to use other forms of anti-inflammatories and wean off it. I don't know if I will be successful, I've been on it for a long time. They have pretty much concluded COPD is a systemic autoimmune disease, we switch on inflammatory genes by smoking and they don't shut down when we stop. They say they don't know what the long term effects of Flovent are and I think a few of us are worse off for it. I started having frank inflammation last fall and pulmo upped dose of it and it suppressed it but never really resolved it and I'm fed up.

Sally, I have some NAC, I just took one in fact. It is used mostly for congestion which I don't have but it also helps me when I get short of breath and twitchy airways in the evening.

OK so what do I do about the cat breath? I haven't had any fish burps but I get kind of an oily feeling in my mouth and later a very bad taste reminds me of that horrid breath cats get sometimes. Is it my cheap brand? I don't taste fish but when I drank a glass of water it smelled like lake water so I'm sure it was my breath.

thanks,
judi

Take the fish oil with food. As your body utilizes it, and fixes your stomach and intestinal linings, the fishy burps or other symptoms usually go away.

Many people are very low in Omega-3's. It is amazing how poor our American diet is in this regard.

You can get Omega-3s now in several smart foods. Smart Balance is one company that provides palatable foods with Omega-3's in them. We even get Chicken nuggets at Costco made in Canada with them in there. Even Jif is now making an Omega-3 peanut butter!

Krill oil typically has no symptoms. Some fish oils are enteric coated now, to dissolve in the small intestine.

Keep it up though, as it appears you really need them acutely.

As Mrs D said, you can add a lot into your diet also. I LOVE salmon!!! I agree, eat when you take the fish supplement.

Thanks, I really hope it continues to work. It must just fit with my particular kind of inflammation. Its weird, it and turmeric both cause a little neuropathy flare up but not too bad. It must all be immune related somehow.

It is the enteric coated kind, someone said it helped to put it in the freezer?

I used to use Smart Balance but it made my popcorn 'melt' and I started to wonder what was in it that did that. I am just paranoid about the junk in our food supply and was suspicious of my fish oil but it appears to have been made in Canada and says it distilled the mercury, pcb,s etc out so hope its ok.

If anyone knows of any more supplements that are good for inflammation please let me know.

thanks
judi

Well, probably not as powerful/important as what you have already mentioned (fish oil, etc,), but I have heard good things re fighting inflammation and immune system enhancement from: Quercetin, Bromelain and Vit C. And Solaray makes a tablet with all three in it. Something I'm trying out now....just recently.

There is really no reason you can't use butter anyway...

All of the "substitute" spreads, have more water in them than butter does. This is to lower calories, etc and be less fatty.

That is why the popcorn gets "wet" and soggy.

I don't use butter or spreads much. I eat my veggies plain.
I cook with ghee now, and that works very well, when stir frying
or cooking up pierogis etc.(I don't have these often tho).
A little jar of ghee lasts me a year in frig.

I find cooking veggies properly conserves their flavors well.

If I have toast I put peanut butter on it. (smart balance )

Butter is made from milk and cream and some salt if it is salted. Nothing else. Spreads like Oleo have a whole lot of other ingredients in them. Oleo has 70 - 80 calories in a Tablespoon of it and butter has 100 calories per Tablespoon. I'll stick with butter. Whatever a person wants.

I had to back off the fish oil for a little while as it seemed to be triggering ICS side effects in addition to helping. I just had an Echo and my heart is fine but I have been retaining water which seems to be associated with the Flovent. I do have some pulmonary hypertension which could be the root cause but I if I take a lower dose of Flovent I retain very little so I will blame the med as that is a listed S/E. So after I took the fish oil for a few days I started having edema at a dose of ICS that I previously tolerated. So I have changed to Qvar and am getting used to it and seeing how low I can go before I add fish oil again. Do you think there is an actual interaction that could be a problem? I read that fish oil also suppresses the immune response. I am pretty sure that ICS are causing actual airway inflammation (listed as a common side effect) so am hoping to take very little and use fish oil instead. Stupid drugs.... I can actually breathe better without them but get inflammation and I don't know if that is COPD inflammation or rebound from the ICS.

I found material that said around 30% of people of European descent are not able to convert short chain fatty acids to long chain very effectively so have a hard time getting Omega 3s from plants. One set of my great grandparents came from Norway where they lived on fish and snow (haha). My grandfather and several of his brothers had early heart attacks (40s), he survived but 3 brothers did not. His children, including my mother took medication for hypertension so had no significant heart problems but all developed Alzheimers. I think I probably need that fish oil.

I know about quercitin, bromelin and Vit C. I take some additional C and it does help but I get mouth sores if I take too much. I haven't taken the supplement but I have seen the brand you mentioned. I do run apples through the chopper for quercitin and eat it with chunks of pineapple and ground cloves. Very tasty. I read that onion skins are a good source too so I put some in the broth when I make soup or stew and they add a nice flavor as well. (Not too much they are bitter) Onion tea with a little skin actually tastes fine but it really makes the house smell and I probably reek of onion too so I don't do it much.

All of the antioxidents work, I can feel it, but the problem is they aren't very stable and the effect doesn't last long enough. The actual supplements might be better. Fish Oil is the best thing I have found so far.

thanks
judi

After I had 4 stents put in back in 2007-2008 my cardiologists prescribed a fish oil called Lovaza..I think the caps were 500 mg, and it was the only fish oil approved by the FDA. It was around $70.00 plus for a thirty days supply. I took it for about a year and then stopped because of the expense, and I found an alternative at the local health food store. It also seemed to help with joint stiffness. Some of these are the triclyceride form (don't know exactly what that means at the moment) of fish oil. I had to take them with food because they made me burp fishiness.